A Zurich monument toppled: The (post-) colonial case of Swiss industrialist and entrepreneur Alfred Escher (1819–1882)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study discusses Swiss industrial pioneer and entrepreneur Alfred Escher (1819–1882) from Zurich in the context of Switzerland’s rising awareness of colonial entanglements. When it became known in 2017 that Escher’s uncle Friedrich Ludwig had owned the Cuban coffee plantation “Buen Retiro” near Artemisa, including 87 enslaved men and women, it launched a public debate that was intensified and broadened in the summer of 2020 by the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter movement. The statue of Alfred Escher in front of Zurich's main railway station has become a symbol not only of Switzerland’s complicity in the crimes of colonialism, but also of the debate over representations of the colonial in public spaces.